I thought you’d enjoy this video published on YouTube by a user named “ldsteencenter.“ It is powerful. The primary audio track is a female singing “I know that my Redeemer lives.” The video track consists of natural disasters, wars, and calamities, interspersed with pictures of Jesus, Gordon B. Hinckley, Book of Mormon quotes, etc. The secondary audio track contains excerpts from general conference talks. The end shows hundreds of new converts on baptism day, climaxing in more pictures of the Savior.
Robert Millet, BYU Professor of Religious Understanding, encourages us to not be afraid to share the gospel: “As Latter-Day Saints, you already know more about God, and Christ, and the Plan of Salvation than anyone who would attack you. You already know more than your attackers will ever know.”
I’m not sure how I feel about that Robert Millet quote.
First of all, Latter-day Saints” differ in their levels of knowledge and it strikes me as quite possible that a non-member could know and understand true principles at a deeper level than some people who are members of the Church. Official membership status doesn’t automatically confer knowledge of anything.
Second, we don’t know the future status of an “attacker” and whether he/she will eventually become a member of the church. An anti-Mormon isn’t necessarily always going to be an anti-Mormon. So the idea that “you already know more than your attackers will ever know” doesn’t strike me as a true statement.
Maybe I’m being picky … but I think statements by prominent people in the Church still need to be analyzed and pondered before they are fully accepted.
Let me put this another way … I think we have to be careful about how condescending we are in our interactions with anti-Mormons. We may have to be straightforward and blunt in our dealings with them … but we shouldn’t be overly confident of ourselves or of our understanding of how individual anti-Mormons will be in the future.
I hope that the intent of the quote is more to say, “you already understand” and in understanding I would hope that would lead to knowing that arguing isn’t going to answer any attacker’s questions, but only in loving, showing compassion and testifying can we affect those who would argue.
I haven’t read the article, so I don’t know, though, but I agree, we can’t be haughty about our beliefs and expect to be any better off on judgement day than those who would attack us.
considering the audience, I think the point of the statement was more along the lines of “Don’t let attacks of others undermine your faith.”
Brother Millet can you help me writing a talk on Heaven Bound i need some information or atleast where to find it on that topic. i have most of you books. thank you kev